Tuesday, December 02, 2008

It Was A Tough Decision...But Everyone Wanted Him Gone

So, the Bulgarian FA have sacked the national team manager for only achieving three draws in their Group 8 World Cup qualification matches so far.

Plamen Markov was fired today. Hardly unusual for a manager to be fired, for sure. But the thing I liked about it the most was that the head of the Bulgarian Football Union suggested it was a "tough decision" that followed a "serious discussion as we wanted to understand why the national team doesn't perform well on the pitch".

In truth, the decision was so "tough" that it was unanimous - with all 13 committee members agreeing to end Markov's reign as national coach. Sounds like a tough decision to me.

It's interesting that, although third in the group, Bulgaria have achieved a creditable home draw with Italy and haven't lost either of their away matches either. They are yet to play the Republic of Ireland and I think they are fairly well placed to take second place in the group.

OK, so that wouldn't mean automatic qualification, but in a group that contains World Cup holders Italy, second would be as much as the Bulgarian football team could realistically expect.